Queenstown Lakes District Council's Katie Church shares how paid internships and flexible leave are helping curb turnover
Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC) is leaning on paid high-school internships, an enhanced parental leave policy and relocation support to fight a talent shortage that is squeezing local government across New Zealand, according to the council's director, people and capability.
Katie Church, who has led people and capability at QLDC for close to four years, said the pressure is being felt sector wide as New Zealand moves through a major restructure of water services delivery.
Central government directed all councils to decide by mid-2025 whether to deliver water services in-house or through a Council Controlled Organisation (CCO) – QLDC opted for the latter, with its new Water Services CCO due to launch on 1 July 2027.
A sector-wide skills gap
Church said the water reform workforce gap has climbed into the thousands in NZ. There is an underlying dynamic to these figures: experienced staff are retiring.
"Across the industry, there are highly experienced professionals with a wealth of knowledge who are approaching retirement. However, replenishing that talent pipeline remains a significant challenge, making it essential to attract and develop new talent entering the industry," she said.
Planners and engineers remain the hardest roles to fill, a challenge Church said affects the whole local government sector. Unlike private-sector employers, councils can't chase the market with upper-quartile pay.
"We're constrained with what remuneration packages we can offer, whereas private sector they can go upper quartile," she said.
Competing on purpose, not just pay
Church said QLDC leans instead on a strong employee value proposition (EVP), including medical health insurance, and on the intrinsic pull of public-sector work.
"I feel like it's really purpose driven work that we do in local government through serving your community," she said, adding that keeping pay at a competitive market rate, even without matching top private-sector salaries, has helped the council's retention numbers move in the right direction.
One of the more hands-on initiatives has been a short-paid internship scheme run with local high schools, giving students a few weeks' paid experience in QLDC's engineering, planning and legal teams over the summer holidays. Applicants went through a genuine interview process and were appointed based on their own merits.
"I think it's important to invest in those internship and graduate roles because it really does inspire," Church said, adding the council would like to extend the model into longer-term graduate pathways.
QLDC has also overhauled its parental leave policy since 2024, topping up the government's 26 weeks of paid parental leave to full salary, allowing couples to transfer the entitlement, and adding three days of leave for staff caring for a grandchild in its first year.
The council pays two full weeks of partner's leave, beyond the statutory minimum. Church said male uptake of parental leave has risen, though she was unable to confirm current uptake figures.
Relocation and retention
To help fill roles based outside the district’s immediate catchment, QLDC offers relocation support through a dedicated provider and a relocation allowance for staff moving from elsewhere in New Zealand.
"We get people relocating all the time," Church said, adding that even staff who don't use the service value knowing it exists.
Church pointed to workforce agility and internal talent mobility – vertical and lateral moves within the council – as a growing focus, alongside efforts to make QLDC a place former staff want to return to.
